DistroWatch Weekly

A weekly opinion column and a summary of events from the distribution world

DistroWatch Weekly

DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 126, 14 November 2005

Welcome to this year's 46th issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The controversy over Nexenta's use of GPL software in its OpenSolaris-based distribution and the never-ending GNOME vs KDE flame wars dominated the headlines last week. We will briefly look at the above stories before examining other interesting events and releases of the week. We also feature an exclusive interview with Barry Kauler, the founder and lead developer of the increasingly popular Puppy Linux. And to prove that a new distribution is born just about every day, we have added seven new ones to the waiting list last week - including a controversial one called "Open Windows", developed by -- wait for this -- a law firm! Happy reading!

Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in ogg (7.40MB) or mp3 (8.19MB) format(courtesy of Shawn Milo).Join us atirc.freenode.net #distrowatch

A controversy, complete with some colourful language on a public mailing list, accompanied the recent launch of Nexenta. For those of you who haven't followed the story, Nexenta is a new, unique distribution that attempts to marry the OpenSolaris kernel with GNU and Debian software utilities. Unfortunately, the two parties are covered with different and mutually incompatible licenses: while all GNU and Debian software is released under the GPL, OpenSolaris is licensed under the CDDL. This makes the attempted marriage rather awkward - as an example, one can't link a GPL-ed utility, such as Debian's APT against a CDDL-ed library, such as the C library that ships with OpenSolaris.

In their eagerness to release a product, the Nexenta developers have decided to ignore the license incompatibility. In their quest for purity, some Debian developers threatened legal action against Nexenta. The resulting discussion was long and unpleasant. The sanity only returned after some members of the Debian community, including Anthony Towns and Ian Murdock expressed embarrassment and amazement over how some Debian developers reacted to the whole issue. Regardless of who is right and who is wrong, shouldn't there be a more civil way to resolve these disputes, especially when considering that both OpenSolaris and Debian are classified as Free Software?

* * * * *

The second major controversy of the week was a 'yet another flame war' between the developers and supporters of GNOME and KDE. This followed the initial announcement by Novell that the company was planning to drop KDE from its enterprise-class products, such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Novell Linux Desktop. The reaction was fierce. Some SUSE users seemingly misunderstood the whole issue, fearing that their preferred desktop environment will be removed from SUSE Linux as well. As a result of this backlash, Novell has now confirmed that all its enterprise operating systems "will continue to ship with both the GNOME and KDE desktop environments."

* * * * *

While many SUSE users have been taking advantage of Debian's popular APT utility to install applications from third-party repositories, it seems that there are also some Debian users who would love to see SUSE tools included in their preferred distribution: "This page contains information about the YaST2 for Debian (aka yast4debian) project. YaST2 for Debian tries to bring a simple and graphical administration tool to the Debian distribution. YaST2 from SuSE/Novell is released under the GNU GPL and consists of different modules for different administration tasks. We are porting the YaST2 source code to the Debian system and its configuration files." An intriguing idea. If you want to find out more please visit the yast4debian page.

* * * * *

Some five weeks after the formal release of Mandriva Linux 2006 to members of the Mandriva Club, the CD and DVD images of the "Free" edition (i.e. containing Free Software only) are now available for free download. Mandriva Linux 2006 is built on top of the Linux kernel 2.6.12 and includes a development version of the X.Org X window system (version 6.9), together with the two most popular desktop environments - KDE (3.4.2) and GNOME (2.10.1), as well as the usual range of desktop and server software. Good early reviews of the product have been published by Linux.com, The Jem Report and Linux Tips For Free. We have tested Mandriva Linux 2006 on three computers and found it to be working perfectly fine on two, while completely failing on the third - due to a compatibility issue between the system's Matrox graphics card and Mandriva's CVS version of X.Org. As always, it is a good idea to test the product before spending money on it.

* * * * *

Besides Mandriva, Linspire has also produced a quiet new release. Numbered as version 5.0.347, the new installation CD image was only announced on the company's user forums, rather than in a formal press release and it appears to be just a minor bug-fix product without any new features. It is provided as a convenience to existing Linspire customers who wish to install the product on a new computer or who had issues with the original Linspire Five-0. It is interesting to note that while new CD images of Linspire 4 appeared frequently, often in two-month intervals, Linspire 5.0.347 is the first new release in more than eight months.

Linspire 5.0 - one of the most elegantly designed and user-friendly distributions available today. (full image size: 1,664kB)

* * * * *

The latest issue of the Gentoo newsletter has confirmed that the distribution will now default to installing the system from "stage3" binaries. Previously, users were encouraged to install a very minimal system only ("stage1"), then proceed with compiling additional applications. This method of installing Gentoo, while very educational, usually took several days to complete. The "stage3" method is much faster, since many packages are installed as pre-compiled binaries. Of course, users can still recompile them at a later stage if they wish to take advantage of additional optimisation features.

* * * * *

If you have installed one of the recently released BSD operating systems on your desktop computer, you might have been somewhat disheartened by the complete lack of any desktop branding in FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD, as most applications (or ports) ship in their default states. To remedy the situation, consider visiting daemonisch.be. This web site has made available a handful of simple but effective desktop wallpapers for the three most popular BSD operating systems in various resolutions and file formats. Now there is no reason why you shouldn't proudly display your operating system preference to people walking past your monitor!

Interview: Barry Kauler, Puppy Linux

Interview with Barry Kauler, Puppy Linux

Although Puppy Linux is a relatively new arrival on the Linux distribution scene, its popularity has skyrocketed over the past few months. Barry Kauler, the founder and lead developer of this minimalist, yet feature-rich operating system was kind enough to answer a few questions about the beginnings of Puppy and other topics of interest.

DW: Barry, thank you very much for your time. Let's start with the usual: please introduce yourself. How old are you? Where do you live? What do you do for living? When and why did you start experimenting with Linux?

BK: I'm 55 and live in a rural region of Western Australia, about 350 km North North East of Perth (the capital city of Western Australia). I have qualifications in electronic engineering and lectured at universities and technical colleges for most of my working life, then a few years ago dropped down to part-time lecturing. This year, no lecturing at all... Puppy has taken over my life.

I was a "Windows person", and developed Windows applications, the most well-known being EVE, my Embedded Vector Editor -- which is a complete vector graphics editor yet only about 80 kb. ...I guess I'm obsessed with simplicity and smallness. I find everything is bloated, and too slow. I see apps created with layers of software, I see complex servers (font, sound) being used when, from my own knowledge of the hardware/software basics tells me that a small 1 kb program would do the job.

DW: Can you briefly describe the beginning of Puppy Linux? How did it all start?

BK: A few years back I was using Linux distros and thinking how big and slow everything is, so decided to create my own distro, built from scratch. I started from the "Boot disk HOWTO" and gradually added stuff, basically file-by-file. The end result is the Puppy you see today.

DW: Puppy Linux is obviously designed as a very light-weight distribution suitable for old and low-resource computers. As such, it is similar to Damn Small Linux (DSL). Have you tried DSL? If so, how would you compare the two - from the point of view of users trying to decide which one is more suitable for their needs?

BK: DSL is based on Debian, so I suppose if that is an issue then go for DSL. In some ways it's like asking "which model car is the best?" It's difficult to generalise. The best advice is probably to try both, then choose the one that you like and does what you want.

DW: Perhaps the most fascinating thing about Puppy Linux is the fact that although it comes as a 60MB ISO image, when I boot into it, I have a pretty complete Linux system with just about any application I might desire. How is this possible - especially when considering that most major Linux distributions now come on DVDs containing as much as 4GB of applications?

BK: This comes back to the way I built Puppy, file by file. I also made unfashionable choices, like going for Tcl/Tk. If you browse the menu in Puppy, you will find that the selection of programs is somewhat eclectic. A mixture of Xlib, Tcl/Tk, GTK1, GTK2, Ash/Bash apps. If I found a small program that did the job, I used it. Some of the apps seem very dated, for example, I use ROX-Filer version 1.2.2, which was the last GTK1 version, also the last version that used a simple and small mime-type handling system -- very old, but it is rock solid and works fine. Then there is Ical, a very old Tcl/Tk calendar program -- slightly quirky user interface, but still easy to use, and above all quite small.

On the other hand, Puppy has, where we think it necessary, the latest of some applications -- AbiWord for example. Gnumeric is scheduled to be updated to the latest version for Puppy 1.0.7 -- although 1.0.6 is just out the door, we Puppy developers are on a "heroin drip" and are now flat out on the next version -- there are typically 6 - 8 weeks between Puppy releases.

DW: Puppy Linux is no longer just a one-man project - it has evolved into a large community with many "kennels", not to mention users. Can you tell us more about this? If I get an idea about extending or improving Puppy Linux, how would I go about it?

BK: For the first approximately two years of Puppy's life, it was mostly me, with occasional input from some others. In the last six months there has been an acceleration of interest, and some of the other guys have become addicted like me. I suppose I modelled Puppy along the "Slackware model", with me as "dictator", but we are moving to a more community based model. Development is still very informal, we still haven't even got a formal bug reporting system.

Joining us is kind of a "do your own thing". This lax management model does have some advantages also. There is a developers page, with suggestions for projects, also the Wiki has a to-do list, so anyone can find something that interests them and just start working on it. Then start chatting on the forum, and in a kind of ad-hoc fashion we all communicate and share information and files. Note also, it has become so easy to create your own custom Puppy, and I notice one of them, Grafpup, has listed as a new distro on DistroWatch.

DW: What's the difference between PupGet and DotPup? Why is there a need for two package managers?

BK: We have this thing called "Puppy Unleashed", which is a collection of all the binary packages that are used to create the live CD, with a build script. The build script allows choice of which of these packages to use, then creates the ISO. The packages *not* chosen become PupGet packages. These are available on the Internet and can be installed with the PupGet package manager. That is, the packages that didn't make it onto the live-CD can still be downloaded and installed into a running Puppy. For example, there is OpenOffice.org and Amaya.

So, think of PupGet packages as the official Puppy packages. DotPups on the other hand are unofficial. These can be knocked together by anybody. They are intended to be very easy to install. Some of them work fine, some are experimental. We now have tools to make it very easy to create a DotPup package, and an easy installer, although they don't need any installer -- basically you just download a .pup file then click on it, then it's installed -- like in Windows!

Note however, recently we have tools to create your own custom live CD with any mix of PupGets or DotPups that you want, so the distinction between these package systems is in some ways blurred.

DW: Is the Puppy kernel vanilla or do you patch it? Any plans to move to kernel 2.6 or are there specific reasons why you are sticking with the 2.4 series?

BK: There was a version of Puppy that used a 2.6 kernel, 1.0.2 I think, but we went back to the 2.4 series. Two main reasons: something seemed to be wrong with NTFS in that particular 2.6 kernel, and people complained it wouldn't boot on some older PCs.

The 2.4 kernel has only two patches, NTFS and SquashFS ...why the kernel developers haven't made SquashFS part of the kernel I don't know -- I know the author of SquashFS applied sometime back (anyway, that's changing the subject!).

DW: One thing that fascinates me about Puppy is the very verbose changelog/news page describing the developments on a daily basis. While many other distribution developers struggle to produce a half-decent release announcement, you obviously enjoy maintaining a blog-style changelog. Why is that?

BK: I guess it is my teaching background. I also used to write correspondence courses. Also, I get annoyed, as we all do, when an otherwise fine open source product lacks documentation -- so I want to be sure that Puppy is well documented. Even the live CD has over 3MB of docs, something quite amazing considering its size -- even the "man" command works (not the actual man command, our replacement).

DW: Puppy has been in development for a while and, in terms of its original design goals, it is now pretty much feature complete. So what's next? Where is Puppy heading? What are your long term plans for the project?

BK: I don't consider Puppy feature complete yet. We have a to-do list. For example, hardware support is not all it could be. Puppy uses OSS for sound, but I'm not so sure if we should move to ALSA. Puppy also uses PDQ for printing, bucking the trend to CUPS. We do have DotPups for ALSA and CUPS, but for the official CD, maybe I won't go for either of those. PDQ is very small and simple, and we may put Perl into the live CD then use PDQ-O-matic as linuxprinting.org to get support for more printers (currently we have Gimp-print drivers, built-in to the live CD).

DW: What do you do when you are not in front of a computer? And more importantly, what do you think should be done to get the Australian rugby team out of the current unprecedented slump?

BK: I like walking. Rugby, what's that? ;)

P.S.: I would also like to send a thanks to all the new and long-term contributors to the Puppy project. Some people, like GuestToo who developed the DotPup system, have been around for a year or two, quietly and consistently helping. There are dozens of names, so I won't attempt to list them all here!

DW: Barry, once again, thank you very much for your time and good luck with your efforts!

Released Last Week

Puppy Linux 1.0.6

Puppy Linux has been updated to version 1.0.6: "Puppy Linux version 1.0.6 released. The two big items in this release are AbiWord 2.4.1 and the multisession DVD. With the 2.4 series, AbiWord has come of age. This is now professional wordprocessing, and Puppy enhances the pleasant experience with a large number of plugins included in the live CD, including grammar checker and equation editor. The Puppy multisession DVD-R is a very smooth experience. For the uninitiated, this boots up from DVD and saves everything back to DVD, no hard drive required at all." Read the Puppy Linux release notes for further details.

GeeXboX, a Linux-based media player, has been updated to version 0.98.7: "This may be the first time that a GeeXboX release has been made without a player update, but the enhancements were significant enough and so we bring you the new version 0.98.7. GeeXboX now enters the 'digital era' with a feature that many users have been waiting for: the DVB cards support. ... Detailed Changelog: Linux updated to 2.6.14; updated uClibc to 0.9.28; support for FUSE (Filesystem In Userland) 2.4.1; support for driver firmware auto-loading; updated Syslinux to v3.11; added a DVB Free-To-Air channel scanner...." See the release announcement on the project's home page for more details.

Red Flag Linux 5.0 "Workstation" for i386 and x86_64 processors has been released. The new version, boasting improved reliability, usability, security and hardware compatibility, is built on top of Linux kernel 2.6.9 and supports Chinese (GB18030 and Big5 encodings), Japanese, Korean and English languages. The familiar Windows-like desktop and control panel from Red Flag 4.1 continues to be the main desktop feature, but the addition of development software means that the product can also be turned into a powerful workstation or development platform. See the distribution's product page (in Chinese) for more detailed description.

Parsix is an Iranian Linux live and installation CD with support for input in Farsi and other convenient utilities for speakers of the language of Iran. Version 0.70 was released today: "We are pleased to announce that a brand new version of Parsix GNU/Linux is available now. This version includes GNOME 2.10.2 and OpenOffice.org 2.0.0 and will be distributed at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) 2005, Nov. 16-18, Tunis. Parsix GNU/Linux 0.70 is built from scratch using KANOTIX 2005-4 and is optimized for hard disk installation. Added many packages like AbiWord 2.4.1, GnuCash 1.8.10, Evince 0.4.0, Camorama, GnomeMeeting, Synaptic, Tasksel, Aptitude.... xFarDic multilingual dictionary is updated to 0.7.3 and now supports multiple word databases." The release announcement.

Parsix GNU/Linux 0.70 - a new version of the Iranian live CD was released last week. (full image size: 1,219kB)

It has been suggested in the forum last week that we should provide an easy way for DistroWatch readers to contribute to our monthly donations pool. Not a bad idea, except there are two small problems. Firstly, your money will change hands twice so the middleman (eg. PayPal) will grab a portion twice (instead of just once if you donated directly). Secondly, our credit card processing service has banned "donations" as a product, so we can't just put up donations buttons on the web site without breaking the contract with the credit card service. Nevertheless, if you still wish to contribute towards the monthly donations pool, you can do so on the Advertise page (in the right column). Please don't forget to leave a comment (or send us an email) so that we know the purpose of the payment and can add it to the current month's donations pool.

On a related note, we received an email from amaroK's Greg Meyer: "We wanted to formally acknowledge and thank you for your very generous donation of $300 to the amaroK project. Today we reached our project fundraising goal and we are all very excited about the great new features being added during 1.4 development. You have been very supportive in the past with the assistance you have given us in publicizing the live CD, and this generous donation will be put to very good use."

* * * * *

Broken download links

Several readers reported "broken download links" in some of our news articles. Upon investigation, it turned out that the direct links to ISO images provided by SourceForge now indeed appear broken - clicking on them would take you to a "not found" page. However, the links still work if you copy them and paste them into an Xterm window. As such, we will continue providing these direct links - after all, if you are like us, you probably download large ISO files using a reliable download tool such as wget or curl, rather then a crash-prone web browser.

* * * * *

New distribution additions

Nexenta. Nexenta is a complete GNU- and Debian-based open source operating system built on top of the OpenSolaris kernel and runtime. It is a result of an inspiration and desire to build a complete system based on the SunOS kernel and GNU software.

* * * * *

New on the waiting list

Bio-Linux. Bio-Linux is a Debian-based distribution providing both standard and cutting edge bioinformatics tools on a Linux base. It has been customised for ease of use and provides an ideal system for scientists handling and analysing biological data.

BU Linux. BU (Boston University) Linux is a Fedora-based distribution specifically tailored for the Boston University environment. The developers have added security updates, made modifications to make software work better with the setup at the university, and added some extra applications.

Hackett Linux. Hackett Linux is a SLAX-based Polish distribution designed for developers' workstations.

loonix-live. loonix-live is a Canadian Gentoo-based live CD with the Unionfs file system and KDE desktop.

Open Windows. Open Windows is a PCLinuxOS-based distribution developed and used by a law firm. Its package list has been customised to include office-specific software a busy law practice might need.

Open Windows: behind the ambiguously chosen name hides a real Linux distribution, created by - I kid you not - a law firm! (full image size: 141kB)

OpenWrt. OpenWrt is a Linux distribution for wireless routers. Instead of trying to cram every possible feature into one firmware, OpenWrt provides only a minimal firmware with support for add-on packages. For users this means the ability to custom tune features, removing unwanted packages to make room for other packages, and for developers this means being able to focus on packages without having to test and release an entire firmware.

Tukaani Linux. Tukaani Linux is a single-CD distribution based on Slackware Linux.

And with this we'll say good-bye until next Monday. We hope you've enjoyed this issue of DistroWatch Weekly!

Ladislav Bodnar

Reader Comments

1 • No subject (by Anton on 2005-11-14 12:05:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
Another great read, thanks Ladislav2 • amaroK (by Corey Quilliam on 2005-11-14 12:18:51 GMT from Canada)
Thank you very much Ladislav for another great issue, as well, thank you very much for donating to the amaroK project last week. It is a great cause!3 • Flame Wars (by Jesse on 2005-11-14 12:26:58 GMT from Canada)
I think one of the hurdles people have when considering movingto Linux is the Linux community itself. While many Linuxusers are calm, friendly sorts, as is evidenced in the manyuser forums, many seem too quick to flame those with differingopinions. I've talked to many a would-be Linux convert who hasshyed away from installing Linux because of the many flamewars which can be found on nearly every user forum, news siteand mailing list in Linuxdom. Last week's flame wars aboutSuSE, the Debian/Solaris issue and KDE vs. Gnome is a sadexample of just how immature zealots can be. How many helpforums have posts which start: "I'm new to Linux, so please forgivemy obviously noob question."? New users shouldn't feel intimidatedby their support group. Switching OSs can be scary enough.4 • dww (by sildan on 2005-11-14 12:40:50 GMT from United States)
Open Windows? God, that SCREAMS for troubles. Remember, M$ even sued Lindows, which only had a similar name, now, it really contains "windows". Is it that these lawyers don't get enough jobs, so they are now trying to get sued themselves? Weird :-/

Bout that Puppy Linux iterview: I've been a Puppy user since back when it still was in its 0.9 releases, and it's been greatly improving every release. Barry does a wonderful job on it, i've never seen a distribution that fast.5 • Kororaa!!!! (by R0bNyc on 2005-11-14 12:41:28 GMT from United States)
Check out the new Kororaa thats all there is!!!6 • Open Windows (by Jerry on 2005-11-14 13:07:44 GMT from United States)
So, do you think they'll represent themselves when Microsoft sues them? You'd think that a bunch of lawyers would know better, especially after the trademark infringement suit Microsoft pursued against Lindows, (now Linspire).7 • why is the openwindows iso an exe? (by Steve on 2005-11-14 13:21:47 GMT from United States)http://www.black-and-company.com/openwindows.html

Why is the iso an exe? openwindows iso.exe Isn't that a little shady?8 • Good job Barry !!! (by Caraibes on 2005-11-14 13:26:02 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Congrats for Barry and the whole Puppy crew, it´s nice to see them here...I am also happy that Barry mentions the sound problem (it mostly never works with Puppy in either via or sis chipset...)But overall it´s a great distro, keep on the good works...

These days I am slaloming between Puppy and Zenwalk 1.3, both of them are really good...9 • Nexenta & GPL vs. CDDL (by Ariszló on 2005-11-14 13:53:54 GMT from Hungary)
Does this apply?

"However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable."10 • Train wreck? (by rcs on 2005-11-14 14:03:23 GMT from United States)
Open Windows eh? I wonder how long it will be before the listing reads *insert name here* (formerly known as Open Windows). While you're at it guys, you could always link some GPL apps to CDDL libs while expressing your disdain for the Gnome desktop, just to cover all the bases. :)11 • Puppy Multi-session DVD (by Andy on 2005-11-14 14:11:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
You guys didn't mention the Multi-Session Live DVD!!! I've been trying it for about a week and have to say Puppy M-S DVD is to Linux what the wheel was to the to the Ancients.

This is truly revolutionary and I'd recommend anyone with a DVD burner to try it.

I've tried over 100 different distro's in the last 2 years and have to say Puppy MS DVD is the most impressive so far.

Well done Barry. Just dont take any offers from headhunters, Linux needs in-o-ventors like you!!12 • M$ vs Open Windows, et al (by Johnnie Cochran on 2005-11-14 14:27:49 GMT from United States)
Where is this mountain of evidence? You will see it's little more than a river or a stream. They don't have any mountain or ocean of evidence. It's not so because they say so. That's just rhetoric. We this afternoon are talking about the facts. And so it doesn't make any sense. It just doesn't fit. If the Eula doesn't fit, you must acquit.13 • "Open Windows" (by just john on 2005-11-14 14:30:02 GMT from United States)
Instead of Konqueror, does it feature DeFenestrator?

A distro designed by a law firm sounds like the subject of a satire, no?

But seriously, maybe the law firm did this as a deliberate "Yoo-hoo! Micro$oft! Come sue us! We dare ya!" to make some sort of legal point, and/or to get the law firm on the map.

(The latter point doesn't seem to be working yet -- we're still calling them "a law firm" rather than whatever their name is.)14 • Libranet (by jorge on 2005-11-14 14:38:58 GMT from Venezuela)
not it has the news of no Libranet until this date?15 • Ah, but there's *good* news too :) (by Ed Borasky on 2005-11-14 14:39:47 GMT from United States)
Buried in the flame wars and dragon-tail-tickling of some attorneys was some good news -- Gentoo just got way easier to install! I don't want you to think that decision was totally flame-free, of course. There was some discussion of it on one of the Gentoo mailing lists.

But ... when push comes to shove, whether you start with stage1, stage2 or stage3, if you do everything *correctly* you have the same base system on your hard drive! So ... why waste your time and your computer's time with a stage1 or stage2 install? And if you make a mistake in the bootstrap, your "stage3" system is worthless.

That's actually why Gentoo made the change -- and it's mostly a documentation change. The forums were littered with the corpses of botched-up stage1 installs by people trying to gain mostly bragging rights, but who ended up only with whining rights. And there's actually a "stage4" in the works, though I don't have the details handy.

Some day *all* distros will be like Gentoo ... till then, there's Gentoo.16 • Donations (by x on 2005-11-14 14:50:18 GMT from United States)
Perhaps someone associated with an international bank could set up an account to handle the reception of donations and then distribute funds as directed by Ladislav Bodnar.

This will probably involve maintaining a balance until the account is closed, however I could live with that as the final donation would be that much larger.

While the details are more complicated than I have presented, would there be enough of us interested in this type of project to pursue further investigation?

We should stay out of the Open Windows controversy, as they will have their hands full soon enough. I wish them the best in their endeavor.17 • Open Windows (by Anonymous on 2005-11-14 15:00:12 GMT from United States)
Black-and-Company is not a law firm.18 • rugby?? pah.. AFL for the real australian (by Ryan G on 2005-11-14 15:04:50 GMT from Australia)
I didnt know puppy was created by a fellow west aussie.. will have to try it sometime. Regarding nexenta, I think it sounds like a great idea, merging a poweful kernel with IMHO the best package manager. I assume it will still suffer from Solaris's lack of hardware support though.Good luck to them anyway.. and leave the lisencing crap for the lawyers..19 • open windows (by ray carter at 2005-11-14 15:50:29 GMT from United States)
I noticed that there was no md5sum to check - I donwloaded the iso image, burned to CD, and it dies when it gets to mounting the squashfs image that is the heart of the package. Tried to mount it on a couple of computers with the same result.

I expect they are doing this (with the name) for publicity - that's all I can imagine that makes any sense.20 • Puppy Rocks! (by guhappy on 2005-11-14 16:32:14 GMT from United States)
I decided to try Puppy last week because I was looking for a small yet useful distro to put on my my old comp. I tried DSL before, but Puppy seemed to be more complete. BTW, is there an easy way to setup a VNC server for Puppy? Also, I'm happy for amaroK because its a great media player, my experience with it on PCLOS has been superb esp. its integration with Konqueror. Keep up the great work, DistroWatch.21 • Open Windows (by paulh at 2005-11-14 17:20:37 GMT from United States)
On the provided screen shot it looks as though all they did was create there own wallpaper and ran pclinuxos. I think that this is a great idea because ms will not be able to sue them because "windows" is just a plural word for window and every body has one for there sides of there homes. Unless they try to patent the word "windows" then they would have a chance but that is unlikely. its like saying, i will go patent the word "computer" and anybody that places that on a ad or side of a box without my expressed permission, i will sue them. TALk about stupid. Ms will have no chance. I say to all the the "developers" of open windows , good job and keep going.22 • Gentoo! (by iMoron on 2005-11-14 17:21:23 GMT from United States)
"littered with the corpses of botched-up stage1 installs"

LOL... To think I almost tried... with 2004.3... Glad I didn't add to the sementery...

I will be on the look out for the stage4 install...23 • Puppy Linux is amazing !!! (by heri on 2005-11-14 17:50:29 GMT from Qatar)
I tried the latest version of Puppy Linux 1.0.6.It's blazingly fast, complete, full of wizards, very easy and friendly, yet so small. Even my HSF winmodem works. Install stream tuner & stream ripper from DotPup, it's true: just with one click like the other OS, and you are ready to go !! This is a "must try distro" for every one.IT'S REALLY AMAZING!!!24 • Open Windows? (by t.djokic at 2005-11-14 17:52:38 GMT from Serbia and Montenegro)
My house has open windows too, will MS sue me?25 • re: Open Windows (by Geoff Gigg on 2005-11-14 18:13:08 GMT from Canada)
"My house has open windows too, will MS sue me?"

Yes, as long as they remain open. However, if you close them, MS will not use.

In addition, you may close them, and keep the curtains open, so that people may peek inside and see what's going on. However, they must agree never to reveal what they saw.26 • windoze (by gnobian_ken00bie on 2005-11-14 18:31:38 GMT from United States)
I am not a lawyer (the acronym always sounds rather personal) but as I understand US trademark law (and it's a matter of trademarks, not patents or copyrights) you could of course call any number of products "windows" or "apple" or what have you. But the namespace is protected if there's a risk of confusion in the consumer's eye because a substantially similar product or service is being offerred under the same name. Where the line is drawn is tricky. But when it's the main product for which the other company is known, i.e. a computer operating system in the case of "windows" as used in Microsoft Windows, you're very likely to run into trouble.27 • amarok+puppy (by timfor on 2005-11-14 18:55:58 GMT from Netherlands)
We heard about amaroK in this DWW, and about Puppy Linux. Both are wonderful, great products, and it's about time somebody combines them :-)

Besides, do you take bets about how long that Open Windows thing will survive without being sued? I'll put my money on about two months. Follow-ups: What are your guesses?28 • Donation (by Anonymous on 2005-11-14 19:58:32 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'd like to nominate the Geexbox project for next month donation. Here is a fantastic multimedia "nano"-distro. And it looks like the guys are having issues with their provider. I'm sure a little help from Distrowatch will be appreciated!"For various reasons, InTouch, our current sponsor that provides us a virtual server with free hosting services, will certainly have to discontinue this offer after the 1st of January. As a result, we're currently looking for anybody that can help with mirroring solutions and/or grant us a new hosting service. After this date, we'll probably lose our server and won't be able to provide you with GeeXboX anymore. Our only solution will then be to buy a new dedicated server and host it with some provider. So, if you're able to help us by providing a server or hosting for free, please contact us."29 • Puppy Linux (by Anonymous on 2005-11-14 20:47:33 GMT from United States)
The one thing I think Puppy Linux is most lacking is good branding. The look and feel is so amorphous and shifting. With a little help from the graphic design standpoint, it could have a much slicker presentation. The amateurish look doesn't match the elegance of the workings of the distro.30 • re: Open Windows (by John Redmond on 2005-11-14 20:51:09 GMT from Hungary)
Linux is only playing catch up to Windows or Mac OSX. Every time some distro does something new, at least for Linux anyway, the trumpet and make a big hoopla about it...and for what? For something Windows has been able to do for years! You may not agree with the business practices of MS and Apple, but after trying to use Linux, and it's differences and incompatibilities among the various distros you see why Windows is used so much.31 • re: why is the openwindows iso an exe? (by Anonymous on 2005-11-14 21:38:32 GMT from United States)
"Note: the iso is labeled as an EXE. This is because we get an error on the download if we label it with the extension of .iso just using the basic NVu program."

Steve the link that you provided gives insight to the problem.32 • Geexbox - I'll second that nomination (by KnightFire on 2005-11-14 22:05:12 GMT from Canada)
I too would like to suggest Geexbox for next month's donation.33 • RISE OF THE PUPPY (by klhrevolutionist at 2005-11-14 22:51:26 GMT from United States)
Well after much effort and work by forum members and evelopers and BArry K. You all are finally noticing PUPPY LINUX. I guess you might get tired of downloading a distro that does nothing but bloat your hard drive ?Anyway Thanks ladislav.

RISE OF THE PUPPY34 • RE: #14 • Libranet (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-11-14 23:07:01 GMT from Italy)
Sorry to state the obvious, but you'll find the most info at the libranet forum.A couple of enlightening threads:

For those who don't know, Brian Masinick and "Morgoth" (David Pastern) are among the oldest and most respected Libranet users.Danieldk (Daniel de Kok) is the codeveloper of Libranet 3.035 • No subject (by mike Wahlstrom on 2005-11-14 23:15:13 GMT from Canada)
A third vote for Geexbox donation of the month

Geexbox is a great distro that does not get alot of plublicity. Can you feature it in the Distrowatch weekly

Thanks again for another great Distrowatch weekly36 • Open Windows (by Ben on 2005-11-14 23:52:35 GMT from Australia)
From their website:"Black-and-Company is not a law firm. No legal advice given.

Black-and-Company does not represent a law firm."

Repeat after me: Black-and-Company is not a law firm. (either that or black-and-company are liars. Sorry, you didn't need to repeat that last bit... will you stop doing that... Mum!!! Tell them to stop copying me!)

While you're at it repeat this after me: Henry the Adequate is my hero. Henry is great and fabulous. Maybe even rad.

This subliminal comment spam brought to you by the Friends Of Henry(FOH) subcommittee for the advancement of Henry.37 • Puppy is one fast, efficent, small dog you would love to have (by Raza on 2005-11-15 00:32:59 GMT from China)
Puppy linux, Ha! (That was a soothing sound not a sigh)I have been using Puppy-Linux since v1.0.4. It was great but lacked some important applications and/or provisions. Then came out 1.0.5, which pretty much fell on it's face, but 1.0.6, WOW, it is THE BEST linux operating system one can have to run on 200Mhz processor with 256mb of ram, no need for a Hard Drive in the system. It is stable, fast, efficent, has almost all the programs one desires to have in an OS, and a system to install almost any program one seeks for which is not in it. It is, IMHO, a complete package. Did I mention that latest relese ISO file is only 55.7mb. SIMPLY AMAZING, a MUST TRY distro.

Come for the size, you will stay for the speed :)38 • Response to 30 (by NYBRONX on 2005-11-15 00:54:22 GMT from United States)
People have been afraid of the new and different since they left the cave. New is not always better thats true. But as long as your attached to the teet that is WINDOWS you will never be able to walk on your own as it were. Do not despair though, you to one day will see the light, just later than the rest of us is all.39 • mandriva linux has gone far away from its users (by gvsrinivasan on 2005-11-15 01:15:49 GMT from India)
mandriva linux was once a good distribution and released thier public iso "s for download edition on wholesome basis ,when they have a new release the public iso images are released on the new release of thier distribution ,but things have changed and you see a mandriva linux from limited edition 2005 ,it has tried to stay far away from its long-time users,

i have switched to ubuntu linux and it is a wonderful distro,if you want to get the mandriva advantage of ease of use ,then use pclinuxos40 • re: Open Windows - Post #30 (by Glenn Ewald on 2005-11-15 01:16:49 GMT from United States)
The real, true reason why Windows is so widely used is that for years and years it was the "default" OS on all new PCs. Everybody who bought a PC got Windows, whether they wanted it or not. I think maybe M$ had some sort of contract with all the PC hardware vendors that required them to install Windows if they wanted to sell their products. In any case, IMHO windows is dominant NOT because its a superior OS, but rather because it "grew up" without any viable competition.41 • Geexbox - I'll second that nomination (by KnightFire on 2005-11-15 02:12:33 GMT from Canada)
I too would like to suggest Geexbox for next month's donation.42 • OIN (by Marc on 2005-11-15 03:33:18 GMT from Canada)
Is this great news or not ???

(2) only someone entirely uninformed about trademark law could have chosen the name "open windows" for a linux distro

(3) the distro is supposedly designed for use by law firms - but that doesn't mean that any law firm is actually using it

(4) any law firm using a beta distro release (Version 0.0.4) would be risking a malpractice suit should a client's documents be corrupted or otherwise damaged.44 • Re:OIN (#42) (by Anonymous on 2005-11-15 04:47:36 GMT from United States)
Sony? The king of proprietary systems? Maybe they want an open source rootkit....45 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-15 05:24:32 GMT from United States)
38 • Response to 30 (by NYBRONX on 2005-11-15 00:54:22 GMT from United States)People have been afraid of the new and different since they left the cave. New is not always better thats true. But as long as your attached to the teet that is WINDOWS you will never be able to walk on your own as it were. Do not despair though, you to one daywill see the light, just later than the rest of us is all.

People using windows are just being practical. When and IF Linux decides to deliver same smoothness of experience people will switch. Until then Linux will remain in the geek domain. Folk in real life don't have time to read mountains of badly written manuals.46 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-15 05:52:34 GMT from United States)
I think maybe M$ had some sort of contract with all the PC hardware vendors that required them to install Windows if they wanted to sell their products.

What does it mean?47 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-15 05:55:31 GMT from United States)
Ladislav why am I reposting every time I hit refresh? Can you do something about it?48 • Good read (by Scott Wilson on 2005-11-15 06:08:19 GMT from United States)
Another great read.

I have tried Gentoo, hated it, felt like I wasted a weekend. Also its found went to work for Microsoft. I thought that I had made a decsion and went with SUSE. Everything was great till I tried SUSE 10 and had to reconsider after using it. Fedora is ok but sometimes buggy a bit to much since The Split i realyy haven been a fan of Fedora. So I am back with Ubuntu. I might actually go back to Debian, but why? when everything works in Ubuntu. Downloading free bsd right now. Will have to give it a try.MAily for familiary when I come across a mac during my service calls. I work for a service company.

Folks in the real life dont have a clue about windows, never read a manual about windows couldnt tell a thing about which version they have. That is also why the trash 2year old PC for the latest and greatest: 3.2GHZ 1 gig of ram, a 200gb drive dvdCD-+rw combo drive, even a sata drive. ooooheeeee wooow, so they can send and recieve and save every email that has been sent to them, surf the web. They will download free "trash your system" applications from a website. But claim that Linux cant be good if its free and the yahoo games iwon games wont work because you need active X installed.bang head here---> X No real rerason to have a PC with real computing power. A good 80 % use windows because it came with the system, (not being practical). I even had a customer tell me that their machine would n ot run XP professional because it had the Home edition installed on it. smack fore head here----> X49 • never post when tired! (by Scott Wilson on 2005-11-15 06:11:34 GMT from United States)
Yikes! I just read my post. Never post when tired, I am sure the spelling cops will be after me.50 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-15 06:14:35 GMT from United States)
Scott Wilson,You're contradicting yourself.51 • "Open Windows" & Microsoft (by crimble65 on 2005-11-15 06:15:16 GMT from United Kingdom)
Since when has Microsoft had any rights to the word open.52 • Ubuntu (by Mika Hack inen ;-) on 2005-11-15 12:06:14 GMT from Italy)
Received today the package with a lot of distro in...................................Tnx Ubuntu!!!53 • #40 & #46 (by Anonymous on 2005-11-15 13:43:09 GMT from Brazil)
"If you're a PC manufacturer, Microsoft's got you by the balls: if you want to pre-load an OEM version of Windows, then you will discontinue all products from Microsoft's competitors. If you won't sign a contract to bundle a pre-loaded version of Windows with all your shipped systems, you'll face a hefty increase in Windows "license fees. In other words: either you sell a copy of Windows with all your shipped systems and nothing else, or you face retaliatory measures from Microsoft (i.e. you won't be able to offer a copy of Windows at a competitive price). The same has been done in the past when PC vendors were forced to bundle Windows 3.1 with new PCs in order to be allowed to ship MS-DOS.

(Note: the above may not apply in all countries and to all OEM manufacturers. Local policies vary, and smaller system integrators pay different prices and have different contracts with Microsoft than huge companies do. Your mileage may vary.)"

when I saw this "open windows" name, I said to myself, "that seems familiar!"After thinking about it, I remebered that there used to be a window manager called openwin - it was used a lot on Sun machines before CDE.

My guess is: if M$ didn't manage to make openwin go away, they are going to have a lot of trouble with open windows.

"Black-and-Company", while not a law office, sound as if they have a few lawyer friends nearby. I am quite sure they know what they're doing.

I grabbed the download and was surprised that it was only 429MB instead of the 650MB or so I expected. Of course, it didn't work and the comment above from " 19 • open windows (by ray carter at 2005-11-14 15:50:29 GMT from United States)" coincides exactly with my experience. I hope the guys at "Black-and-Company" can get this fixed pronto. This looks like an interesting distro.56 • Im not contradicting, just fustrated with dead headed Windows user (by Scott Wilson on 2005-11-15 14:37:22 GMT from United States)
My Post was directed to the "Windows is so easy to use" group.Usally the same group that that thinks there are too many Linux's OS. And their will be a fork, like Unix. (Bang head twice)Linux is a kernel, You take that kernel and add stuff to it to create flavor "what ever" What got MS in Trouble is this, years ago, say PC builder "A" was going to sell 200: 100 PC's with Windows, but also offer another 100 PC's or with *nix. MIcrosoft forced PC builder "A" to buy an OEM License for all 200 PC's. Why would PC builder "A" still offer a *nix PC if he was forced to into buying a MS license for the 100 PC that were going to use *nix57 • Windows and Linux (by Anonymous on 2005-11-15 14:50:03 GMT from United States)
Here's what I know. I use Windows, my system crashes, I get spyware, and my blood pressure goes up 20 points. I use Linux, my system never crashes, spyware is nonexistent, and installing software through synaptic is even easier than downloading an exe and clicking next, next, next and finally rebooting. As someone pointed out, Windows is only popular because it came with PC systems for years and people have gotten used to it. If you believe that it's superior simply because so many people use it, then I suppose Galileo and Columbus were wrong in saying that the world wasn't flat and it wasn't the center of the universe simply because everyone believed otherwise. I suppose I'm smarter than my neighbor too because I drive a better car than him. Anyone with half a brain learned this lesson long ago.58 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-15 17:20:59 GMT from United States)
" I use Linux, my system never crashes"May I ask what distro? I don't use windows at all, and my kubuntu drives me up the wall, so did RH so did Gentoo. Suse was tolerable. But pretty much every distro has some things broken. So what's your secret? "I suppose I'm smarter than my neighbor too because I drive a better car than him" ....Or maybe he just doesn't care about cars and you're just stupid when you judge people by the type of car they drive. And talking about cars and free stuff. People are suckers for free stuff. So here's a hypothetical for you:On your right we have a car from Toyota while on the left is BMW. To get Toyota you have to shell out some money if you want it, but you can have BMW for free. Which one would you choose? Now transplant this example into the world of OSes. Even though Linux(that's SOOO much better by your assertions) is free people still take Windows (Toyota) and happy to pay for it. What does it tell you? Don't think too hard, you might damage your "smart brain".59 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-15 17:35:07 GMT from United States)
Scott Wilson,Did you get any rest at all? You still sound tired. And about that head banging business - we don't need to relive your experiences. And finally we all "linux people here". Windows crowd doesn't read this site. You can safely assume we're familiar with the history of windows licensing scheme.60 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-15 17:47:11 GMT from United States)
" I use Linux, my system never crashes""May I ask what distro? I don't use windows at all, and my kubuntu drives me up the wall, so did RH so did Gentoo. Suse was tolerable. But pretty much every distro has some things broken. So what's your secret?"

Mepis61 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-15 17:58:26 GMT from United States)
What's the best distro for an old laptop (Compaq 1692 --192MB RAM, 6GB HDD, USB ethernet, Syaptics Touchpad Mouse)?62 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-15 18:02:29 GMT from United States)
MepisTried that on my laptop, kernel crashed right out of the gate. I did beat it into submision with some switches that I never had to use with any other distro. Installed another kernel - mouse stopped working. So much for that.63 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-15 18:06:40 GMT from United States)
" I use Linux, my system never crashes""May I ask what distro? I don't use windows at all, and my kubuntu drives me up the wall, so did RH so did Gentoo. Suse was tolerable. But pretty much every distro has some things broken. So what's your secret?"

Mepis64 • BSD Wallpapers and amaroK (by Luk van den Borne on 2005-11-15 18:49:02 GMT from Netherlands)
Cool! I've been searching for wallpapers with the new FreeBSD logo. But until now, I haven't been able to grab one. Thank you very much for bringing this under my attention.

On amaroK: It's the best player I've ever seen: on-the-go playlists, smart playlists, dynamic mode, playcount, ratings, radio streams, iPod sync, multiple audio backends, Postgres/MySQL database backend (optional), crossfading, wikipedia, cover support, lyrics, last.fm support, [...list continues...]. Truly amazing!65 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-15 19:14:36 GMT from United States)
"May I ask what distro? I don't use windows at all, and my kubuntu drives me up the wall, so did RH so did Gentoo. Suse was tolerable. But pretty much every distro has some things broken. So what's your secret? "

Debian. I said it doesn't crash, not that some things aren't broken. If you don't know the difference, go back to Windows.

"Or maybe he just doesn't care about cars and you're just stupid when you judge people by the type of car they drive."

You obviously missed my point. Let me spell out for you since you don't have the half of brain I was referring to. I was being sarcastic. If you don't know what this word means, look it up.

"Even though Linux(that's SOOO much better by your assertions) is free people still take Windows (Toyota) and happy to pay for it. What does it tell you?"

People are dumb. It has always been. Read up on Robert Ciardini who talked about business principles. He talked about a jewelry store that was selling cheap jewelry and no one bought it. The owner doubled the prices and people started to buy it. Is the jewelry of finer quality because of price?66 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-15 19:18:08 GMT from United States)
In my post above, I said people are dumb. This includes me as no one is perfect : )67 • Laptop Linux (by Anonymous on 2005-11-15 21:19:28 GMT from United States)
For the desktop, I've found PCLinux to be the most user friendly, easiest to configure, and best suited for my needs. Trying to find something that will work on my recently acquired old laptop (see post #61) is another story.

I've tried PCLinux (too heavy for the hardware), Vector (can't get the mouse or ethernet to work), DSL (couldn't get X going), Mepis (too many problems to detail), various other Knoppix based solutions (none of which will work without extensive modification) and about to download burn and install Puppy.

Any other suggestions? (don't say Gentoo, we aren't that deep into winter yet!)68 • Choice of OS preinstalled on PC (by rglk on 2005-11-15 21:26:15 GMT from United States)
Re #58: "On your right we have a car from Toyota while on the left is BMW. To get Toyota you have to shell out some money if you want it, but you can have BMW for free. Which one would you choose? Now transplant this example into the world of OSes. Even though Linux(that's SOOO much better by your assertions) is free people still take Windows (Toyota) and happy to pay for it. What does it tell you?"

The analogy is flawed: the customer doesn't have a choice. Customer choice has been utterly irrelevant in the ascendency of MS Windows to being the dominant consumer OS which has been accomplished largely by anti-competitive (monopolistic) strong-arm tactics. Name me one major PC maker that for many or most of their systems offers the customer a choice in the OS that comes preinstalled with the system.

I can think only of two. Dell now offers a desktop machine, the Dimension n Series E510 (one out of their total product line of dozens) that ships not with Windows XP but with FreeDOS (you can easily put Linux on this machine), and Sun Microsystems offers the Ultra 20 Workstation (x86 architecture, with an AMD 64-bit processor) with Solaris 10 preinstalled (again, Linux can easily be installed). Some industry observers say that the Sun Ultra 20 Workstation is the best deal for a PC on the market today; part of the reason may be that Sun could shave $100 off the final price, or whatever the cost is to a PC maker of one license of Windows XP Home Edition.

The customer should demand that they have an option of which OS comes preinstalled with their PC. E.g. Dell offers a standard package for most every model of PC they sell but the system can be customized at more or less cost with regard to practically every component, the final price depending on how the customized items stack up to the standard equipment. Prospective customers should demand that the same applies to the OS: they should have the option of buying the system without OS, e.g. at $100 off.

I would not buy any PC that obligatorily comes with Win XP preinstalled. I don't use that OS, and I'd be throwing $100 away.

Robert69 • Laptop Linux (by rglk on 2005-11-15 21:47:38 GMT from United States)
Re #61 & #67: Have you tried one of the slackware derivatives that are available as live CD's? Start with slax. If that works you may also want to try out some of the slax offspring such as wolvix and klax that offer additional nifty features. I've been quite impressed with the live CD's based on slackware that have popped up in recent months.

Robert70 • #67 distro for an old laptop (by ray carter at 2005-11-15 22:01:22 GMT from United States)
I suggest you try Elive - I put it on a P2-233 and it performs reasonably well.71 • Laptop LInux (by Bill Savoie at 2005-11-15 22:09:33 GMT from United States)
I fixed my 80 year old mother up with a 166 mhz laptop using feather. I edited an icon, so she clicks on it to set up the dial up, and the icon then calls in firefox. I got her an web based e-mail, so she won't get infected. It was almost perfect, except I left win95 on it as a dual boot option. She had a maid come in and tells her to use Win95. Soon she forgot how to do linux and then Win95 was infected. I have given up trying to e-mail Mom, since VOIP.

I like KANOTIX and SUSE 10 on my HP ze4300 laptop. So the 'ideal' linux depends on what you have and what you want to accomplish.

.. Although 'anything' can be improved, it is often good enough. (I like vim, a good editor is like a woman, you only need one.)72 • RE #71 & 72 (by Anonymous on 2005-11-15 22:13:19 GMT from United States)
Thanks guys, I'll try those. I did try Klax last night, but couldn't get a working X on any of my hardware let alone the laptop. Maybe I'll have better luck with Slax and Elive. Also going to give PC-BSD a shot, what can it hurt? :)73 • OpenWindows (by Guest on 2005-11-16 00:35:29 GMT from United States)
OpenWindows isn't done by a law firm.

Just follow the link above and you'll see that it's for lawyers, not by lawyers.74 • Laptop Linux (by rglk on 2005-11-16 04:00:26 GMT from United States)
#72: Re Klax: Did you boot: klax nogui -> console, then login: root, PW: toor, at prompt #xconf, then #startx ? That should get you to a KDE desktop.

If Klax didn't work, slax isn't very likely to work either. That old laptop of yours seems to be a tough customer.

On my system, across the board the BSD live CD's have a much harder time recognizing the hardware than the Linux live CD's. I can get 90% of the latter to work on my hardware, more or less. Among the BSD live CD's only FreeBSD 5.3-KDE3.3 worked all right (but not at the best resolution of my monitor), all the others failed (FreeSBIE 1.1, etc. - I don't remember the rest of them; they're gone).

Another possibility would be the excellent stux v.0.8.1 (based on slackware but using the Knoppix hardware detection technology).

good luck ;)76 • RE #74 (by Anonymous on 2005-11-16 05:01:50 GMT from United States)
RE: Klax I have to admit, I'm getting a little spoiled and lazy using PCLinuxOS, as I didn't run xconf on Klax, though I did use the cheatcodes to set xres=800x600 and use xdrvr=fbdev.

I did succeed in getting PC-BSD running on the laptop tonight though. I've been wanting to try it anyway, so now that it's up and running (still need to get the sound configured) I'll see if I can break it so I can try out the rest of the distros I downloaded and burned today. Puppy, Slax, and Feather.

Ran Elive off the cd after installing PC-BSD, and will be checking into that one further.

Thanks again guys, you've gotta love Distrowatch, and the Linux/BSD community. God help us all if the Uber Capitalists from Redmond and elsewhere, ever succeed in their quest of the complete CopyRight Nazification of the digital world.

Long live Open Source!!77 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-16 07:31:55 GMT from United States)
"The analogy is flawed: the customer doesn't have a choice" That is not true. Stop deluding yourself. Everyone have heard about linux by now.At some point some major computer manufacturers had offered Linux shipped on their PCs. I don't know if they still do that but they definitely did. And if they stopped there is a reason that may very much upset you: there was no demand. Further more in my circle of friends everybody tried some iteration of Linux and the verdict was unanimous: "I don't have time for this". So why would customers demand something they don't want to use? Why would manufacturers waste their time on something that has no demand?78 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-16 07:59:02 GMT from United States)
"People are dumb"You got that right. And that is why linux has no future on consumer desktop.79 • #77 (by welkiner on 2005-11-16 08:08:36 GMT from United States)
If you love Micro$oft so much and hate Linux so much, why are you wasting your time and our time on a Linux site.

I have made my living working on M$ products since the 1980s. That is why I run Linux on all my personal computers, and most people on this site understand why. If you do not understand why, then maybe you need to go back to your Windoze world and just be happy.

wb80 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-16 08:18:58 GMT from United States)
Micro$oft? Windoze? M$? What are you twelve? This describes linux community perfectly. Infantilism across the board.81 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-16 08:38:06 GMT from United States)
to welkiner"That is why I run Linux on all my personal computers, and most people on this site understand why." What are you doing on this site then? This site is for those who are looking for a better distro. Why? Because they are unhappy with the distro they have now. And they are hoping that there is something better.... but there isn't. All distros suck.82 • RE t o 80 (by Phantasmathos on 2005-11-16 08:59:25 GMT from El Salvador)
Micro$oft Window$ !!!Micro$oft Window$ !!!Micro$oft Window$ !!!Micro$oft Window$ !!!Micro$oft Window$ !!!

I like to type it: Micro$oft Window$ !!!Go to the hell with your loved M$ OS. We like-love-live LINUX way here!

My Ultra 20 just arrived! Alas, everyone at Sun seems to be clueless about this machine. It arrived with all software pre-installed, but not one shred of documentation beyond a useless “setup” guide that did not remotely match the actual boot process, which asked a slew of questions and apparently requires that reverse-DNS be configured for the IP address you assign the thing.

There is no documentation CD, no Solaris installation media, and lots of fluff stuff like a demo “solutions” CD (with, amazingly, not ONE Solaris demo on it!) The registration card says only “Be the first to know! Go to http://www.sun.com/registration/hardware.” This link goes nowhere.

I called tech support, but I don’t have a support contract number, and after two days nobody can find out where my support information is. They can’t find the machine s/n in their systems. One Sun person solemnly assured me that I can’t possilby have an Ultra 20 because the first ones won’t ship until August 26th, yet my machine plainly says “Ultra 20″ right on the front of it.

It’s been a while since I used Solaris, and a lot has changed. The default Java desktop replaces CDE (I’m sure I can get CDE going if I try). This desktop is very clean looking, but rather sluggish. Dragging a window results in many ghosted copies of the window dragging behind — very ugly, and very tedious after just a few minutes.

Oddly, the default $PATH is so primitive that even ping doesn’t work. I doctored it up, but still haven’t been able to get any of the clearly-existing Jave Studio packages to run. There are no obvious launch icons for these, and no printed docs, and no system-resident or online docs that anyone can point me to. There are install CDs for the various Studio things, but they appear to have no manuals on them — just some VERY complex installation instructions for installing from scratch. Sheesh! This can’t really be this hard!

I installed a third-party package installer, called pkg-get, that let me install some useful open source tools to make the machine usable — ethereal, debuggers, etc.

The machine looks absolutely stunning sitting there in the corner, giant SUN logo in 500-point type blazing away on the side. Sun gets an A+ for pretty box design. Alas, they get a D- for out-of-the-box experience. I’m not expecting to have my hand held every step of the way, but I expect SOME sort of basic guidance from Sun. A Getting Started guide. SOMETHING!

Ah, there’s Sun calling me back again now… False alarm, just a Sun techie telling me that his group can’t help me because they don’t support the Ultra 20 and he doesn’t know who does.

Just fired up my new ultra 20. After about 30 reboots, only ONE has been successful. And the machine is silly loud. Like being inside a vaccuum cleaner.

I continuously get different error messages. Different boot options (into the BIOS this morning, but not since). Ran a hardware check - everything OK.

Haven’t contacted sun yet - mostly bc I have a feeling they are not going to help much. Will probably break down soon though.

Pretty box - if only a little smaller I could at least use it as a paper weight.

jeff86 • TROLLS (by Phantasmathos on 2005-11-16 09:09:58 GMT from El Salvador)
M$ Windoze zealots are reading this site. May be they are afraid about the power that are borning in the Open Source Community. This trolls like to said stupids things without sense or argument... and I hate that... But may be you are right, Im not gona feed them more.87 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-16 09:10:01 GMT from United States)
Don't feed the Redmond troll.Yep, standard response from linux zelot. Let's all break out in "Linux is great" chant and thwart off the evil.88 • M$ and comment #80 by a windoze lover (by imanonymoustoo on 2005-11-16 09:20:09 GMT from Germany)
I guess we all expect to get sued for copyright missuse if we write out the "proper name" of that software dump. That guy that wrote comment #80 seems to be afraid he'll be personally flamed if he were less than anonymous. It looks like that was a favorite name a few years ago when you were born...89 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-16 09:20:24 GMT from United States)
"Don't feed the Redmond troll"Is it possible that I'm BSD troll?90 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-16 09:31:36 GMT from United States)
"That guy that wrote comment #80 seems to be afraid he'll be personally flamed if he were less"What is there to be afraid of? All flames will be junked like any other spam.Go ahead generesnik@hotmail.com. If you should be so lucky as to recieve a reply from me make sure to check the header so we can put this whole "windows lover" business to rest.91 • phantasmathos (by gnobian_ken00bie on 2005-11-16 09:34:29 GMT from United States)
I agree completely with what you're saying. But fortunately, when assertions are so obviously false and patently absurd, just about anyone can spot it. Challenging such assertions generally wastes everyone's time.

On the other hand, he did make one semi-plausible claim: that people come here looking for a better distro and are unhappy with GNU/Linux. I could see how one might suppose that and it may well be the case for some, but having come to this forum for several months and speaking from my own experience, many come here who are quite happy - even eager to defend - their preferred distro. But they are also curious about what else is out there and perhaps also eager to help others. After all, curiosity is what brought us to Linux and wanting to help others is what has us participate in whatever form we're able. It's why Linux is strong.92 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-16 09:56:48 GMT from United States)
It's why Linux is strong.Are you talking about kernel or the whole shebang?93 • No subject (by gnobian_ken00bie on 2005-11-16 10:44:31 GMT from United States)
Actually, I should have said it's why FLOSS is strong as I'd include GNU, Linux, the BSDs, the Mozilla project, et al, as being strong because of the curiosity and community spirit of their supporters.94 • yast4debian (by Benjamin Vander Jagt on 2005-11-16 13:25:13 GMT from United States)
*breathes a sigh of relief* Phew! FInally! I'm actually planning to switch to Debian today just because of this. I tried to get the pain-in-the-neck YaST2 source to work in Slackware for some time, with very limited success. It's good to know that people who know what they are doing are working on spreading out the joy of YaST2. (-:

Thank you Debian!95 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-16 14:25:07 GMT from United States)
"Micro$oft? Windoze? M$? What are you twelve?"

Are you? Do you have any real data to backup your claims or do you just follow whatever the rest of the cattle do?

"You got that right. And that is why linux has no future on consumer desktop."

I wouldn't say a current multi-billion dollar industry has no future.

Here's some chocolate dear troll, now run along back to the sand box and play with the other children.96 • Distro for old laptop... (by Caraibes on 2005-11-16 15:17:09 GMT from Dominican Republic)
You should give a try to Zenwalk...I admit not to have it installed on laptops, but it works great on older desktops...-What do you have to loose, it´s only a 400 mb download...

Find it in the Distrowatch directory, and its comunity on the forum is very helpfull and friendly...97 • Old laptop (by rglk on 2005-11-16 17:11:52 GMT from United States)
Re #76: Glad to hear you got at least one distro working on your laptop. If you try slax, I'd recommend you go through the same routine of boot: slax nogui -> login -> #xconf -> startx that I spelled out for klax. Slax, klax, stux, wolvix, etc., all use the same startup scripts, derived from slax.

Puppy, Feather and DSL all use the same X server (xvesa or xfbdev from Kdrive), they don't use Xfree86 or Xorg. I can't get any of them to give me working video on my system (the Kdrive X servers don't support the Intel i8x5 on-board graphics chip set family properly). If DSL failed on your laptop, Puppy and Feather probably will too.

In any case, please keep us posted on what did and didn't work on your laptop.

Robert98 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-16 18:10:29 GMT from United States)
to #95"BSD users and Linux users are cousins."Really? I guess you havn't heard. Google buddy. You'll be surprized.99 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-16 19:41:20 GMT from United States)
1. BSD users are unlikely to attribute market share to people having a variety of choices available or to equate market share with superiority.

2. BSD users are generally intelligent.100 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-16 20:05:58 GMT from United States)
3. A BSD user would know that hotmail headers wouldn't give any indication what OS was in use. They tend to be savvy about such things.101 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-16 20:25:19 GMT from United States)
1. BSD users are unlikely to attribute market share to people having a variety of choices available or to equate market share with superiority.I'll give you that. NeXT was a great system. Sorry it didn't take.

2. BSD users are generally intelligent.And they would be the first to tell you that linux is not that great.

3. A BSD user would know that hotmail headers wouldn't give any indication what OS was in use. They tend to be savvy about such things.Unless you are using hotsmtp and let's say kmail. In that case header would have this:

Last time I checked KMail doesn't run on windows yet. Or does it?102 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-16 20:54:42 GMT from United States)
I stand corrected. Of course, headers can be faked. And certainly so can anything cut and pasted. Anyway, who cares if you use BSD or Windows. You're stil an idiot wasting your time and ours. Whether you're an embarassment to BSD or to Windows is of little consequence.103 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-16 21:02:04 GMT from United States)
I'm just having fun at the expense of linux obsessives. thats all. Here's something else for you to chew on:1049848239: Started emerge on: Apr 09, 2003 00:30:391049848239: *** emerge --oneshot --nodeps --usepkg --buildpkg ccache1049848240: >>> emerge (1 of 1) dev-util/ccache-1.9-r2 to /1049848246: >>> AUTOCLEAN: dev-util/ccache1049848246: --- AUTOCLEAN: Nothing unmerged.1049848246: ::: completed emerge (1 of 1) dev-util/ccache-1.9-r2 to /1049848246: *** exiting successfully.1049848248: Started emerge on: Apr 09, 2003 00:30:481049848248: *** emerge --usepkg --buildpkg >=sys-apps/portage-2.0.251049848249: >>> emerge (1 of 1) sys-apps/portage-2.0.47-r10 to /1049848268: ::: completed emerge (1 of 1) sys-apps/portage-2.0.47-r10 to /1049848268: *** exiting successfully.

Any idea what it might be?104 • Stop feeding the trolls (by rglk on 2005-11-16 22:51:53 GMT from United States)
To everyone: If you don't want this forum to go the way many Linux Usenet newsgroups have gone, i.e. infested with and poisoned by trolls, STOP FEEDING THE TROLLS.

Also, as a regular reader of this forum I'd appreciate it if posters would identify themselves by some kind of handle other than "Anonymous" and fill in the subject line with something pertinent rather than leaving it at "No subject".

So far in this issue, there have been several dozen posts by "Anonymous" which appears to refer to at least five or six different people. There have been equally as many "No subject" posts.

If you can't even bother to expend the minimal effort of filling in the Name and Subject lines, then don't expect that anyone will bother reading your post and wasting their time trying to figure out who is responding to which post by whom.

Robert105 • Stop feeding the trolls (by yes on 2005-11-16 23:00:38 GMT from United States)
What is TROLL?106 • Stop feeding the trolls (by rglk on 2005-11-17 00:08:31 GMT from United States)
In Internet terminology, a troll is a person who posts inflammatory messages on the internet, such as on online discussion forums, to disrupt discussion or to upset its participants. The word, or its derivative, "trolling", is also used to describe such messages or the act of posting them.

Users may have various motives for trolling. A common factor for many is the desire to draw attention to themselves. Inflammatory, sarcastic, disruptive or humorous content is posted, meant to draw other users into engaging the troll in a fruitless confrontation. The more attention the troll's activities draw from users, the more persistent the troll's behavior in the forum. This gives rise to the often repeated protocol in internet culture: "Do not feed the trolls."

The long history of trolling, and the strong support for anonymous discourse on the Internet, suggests that the story of the "anonymous troll" is only beginning. Whether there can be a "culture" consisting of people who do not know each other, except through a common experience of being bounced from Internet forums, is questionable, but some do claim it is possible and already occurring.

Forums exist specifically to support trolls and trolling, to exchange troll tips, and to identify targets that other trolls might fruitfully bait or debate.

Trolling culture is best observed in trolls, who do not know each other, working together. Because the common methods of creating inflammatory posts are well known, and a subject of jokes in many places on the Internet, it is sometimes possible for a troll to identify another troll at work. A troll, trolling another troll, often creates massive amounts of pretend drama between them that are taken seriously by non-troll observers (especially if they take sides). The end result is that the two trolls can work together to force a conversation to go off topic, or center a forum's discussion around themselves, more effectively than on their own.

.... etc. See Wikipedia.

If you want to see trolls in action, go to comp.os.linux.advocacy.

Robert107 • RE #97 Old Laptop (by cjw on 2005-11-17 02:01:13 GMT from United States)
Robert, thank you for the X server info on Puppy, DSL, and Feather. I will keep you posted on how the different distros work out on that unit. For now though, I am going to take PC-BSD for a ride.

This is the first time I've been able to get any of the BSD's installed and working on any of my equipment. No doubt that has something to do with this version being based on FreeBSD-6.0, rather than the buggy 5.3 and 5.4 releases. I was able to use the FreeSBIE LiveCD on one machine though.

Thanks for all your suggestions and help. I'll post back with more info later. By the way, the laptop is a Compaq Presario 1692.108 • Dumpster diving for MS software (by Anonymous on 2005-11-17 14:22:50 GMT from United States)
I see this, kind of funny, a leagle way to dump MS. http://www.thechannelinsider.com/article2/0,1895,1885946,00.asp109 • Firefox FUD (by Max on 2005-11-18 03:31:13 GMT from Australia)
Look at what this guy says about Firefox, right at the bottom of the page...

This could be one of the biggest events to affects FLOSS *ever*111 • GPL vs CDDL (by GPL lover on 2005-11-19 16:24:52 GMT from United States)
The cddl means you code for SUN for FREE.The gpl means you code for EVERYONE for FREE.I love the idea of the GPL.I was wondering when this would happen. A non flame link that explains it cooler than I can.http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/11/msg00671.html

The SUN employees should announce themselves as such at the beginning of the FUD, and or lies. Umbunto is GPL,ed softwareSolaris is Cddl,ed softwareDear Solaris steal someone elses hard work please !!!112 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-19 23:04:00 GMT from United States)
I wonder if next monday you want to discuss this:

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